Importance Of Reflection In Health Care

During this reflective assignment, it will explore what reflection is and how it relates to health care. There will be discussions on why reflection is used, its purpose, what it achieves and how health care professionals reflect in practice. A reflective model will be used to reflect on a critical incident in relation to consent, which has occurred during practice. The critical inci-dent will focus on communication, respect, and dignity. This reflective piece will also evaluate the positive and negative experience that has been gained from the critical incident and how it will help contribute to future learning. It will analyse what communication, respect, and digni-ty are and how this relates to the incident. The assignment will also include

It allows the individual to analyse thoughts and feelings which may have been generated from the critical incident, in order to improve self-awareness and to identify behaviour and actions that can affect a health care professional during practice. Boyd and Fales (1983) defined reflection as a process that involves evaluating problems that may have caused concern, that has been brought to the health care professionals attention, by what has been experienced during the critical incident. Reflection is used widely in health care, accord-ing to Knight (2015) reflection is an important element of practice, as a health care profes-sional is exposed to many different and sometimes difficult situations, which can have an emotional burden especially in the demanding and difficult environment that they may work in. According to the NMC (2016), it recognizes the importance and the need for nurses to use reflection, as their revalidation process requires them to write five reflective accounts and en-gage in reflective discussions in order to complete this

The purpose of reflection is to increase knowledge and improve skills while evaluating individual performance in practice. It also helps healthcare professionals to avoid past mistakes, problem solve and increase opportuni-ty 's to gain new knowledge. Reflection is an ongoing process that allows health care profes-sionals to consider their own actions and to recognize their strengths and weaknesses in order to determine whether their involvement had a positive or negative impact on the outcome of the critical incident. Tashiro et al. (2012) Suggest that nurses who reflect are more effective in providing better quality patient care and it enables nurses to engage in lifelong learning and self-improvement. According to Carrol et al. (2002) the development of skills and knowledge is fundamental in nursing and reflective practice is used to accomplish this. Reflective prac-tice enables nurses to be skilled in reflection, critical thinking and problem solving which are essential when problem-solving in